Saved Bookmarks
| 1. |
Biography of Robert Frost |
| Answer» BiographyEarly yearsRobert Frost, circa 1910Robert Frost was born in\xa0San Francisco, California, to journalist William Prescott Frost, Jr., and Isabelle Moodie.[2]\xa0His mother was a Scottish immigrant, and his father descended from Nicholas Frost of\xa0Tiverton, Devon, England, who had sailed to\xa0New Hampshire\xa0in 1634 on the\xa0Wolfrana.Frost was a descendant of\xa0Samuel Appleton, one of the early settlers of\xa0Ipswich, Massachusetts, and\xa0Rev. George Phillips, one of the early settlers of\xa0Watertown, Massachusetts.[4]Frost\'s father was a teacher and later an editor of the\xa0San Francisco Evening Bulletin\xa0(which later merged with\xa0The San Francisco Examiner), and an unsuccessful candidate for city tax collector. After his death on May 5, 1885, the family moved across the country to\xa0Lawrence, Massachusetts, under the patronage of Robert\'s grandfather William Frost, Sr., who was an overseer at a New England mill. Frost graduated from\xa0Lawrence High School\xa0in 1892.[5]\xa0Frost\'s mother joined the\xa0Swedenborgian\xa0church and had him baptized in it, but he left it as an adult.Although known for his later association with rural life, Frost grew up in the city, and he published his first poem in his high school\'s magazine. He attended\xa0Dartmouth College\xa0for two months, long enough to be accepted into the\xa0Theta Delta Chi\xa0fraternity. Frost returned home to teach and to work at various jobs, including helping his mother teach her class of unruly boys, delivering newspapers, and working in a factory maintaining\xa0carbon arc lamps. He did not enjoy these jobs, feeling his true calling was poetry.Adult yearsRobert Frost\'s 85th birthday in 1959In 1894, he sold his first poem, "My Butterfly. An Elegy" (published in the November 8, 1894, edition of the\xa0New York Independent) for $15 ($443 today). Proud of his accomplishment, he proposed marriage to Elinor Miriam White, but she demurred, wanting to finish college (at\xa0St. Lawrence University) before they married. Frost then went on an excursion to the\xa0Great Dismal Swamp\xa0in\xa0Virginia\xa0and asked Elinor again upon his return. Having graduated, she agreed, and they were married at Lawrence, Massachusetts on December 19, 1895.Frost attended\xa0Harvard University\xa0from 1897 to 1899, but he left voluntarily due to illness.[6][7][8]\xa0Shortly before his death, Frost\'s grandfather purchased\xa0a farm\xa0for Robert and Elinor in\xa0Derry, New Hampshire; Frost worked the farm for nine years while writing early in the mornings and producing many of the poems that would later become famous. Ultimately his farming proved unsuccessful and he returned to the field of education as an English teacher at New Hampshire\'s\xa0Pinkerton Academy\xa0from 1906 to 1911, then at the New Hampshire Normal School (now\xa0Plymouth State University) in\xa0Plymouth, New Hampshire.In 1912, Frost sailed with his family to\xa0Great Britain, settling first in\xa0Beaconsfield, a small town outside London. His first book of poetry,\xa0A Boy\'s Will, was published the next year. In England he made some important acquaintances, including\xa0Edward Thomas\xa0(a member of the group known as the\xa0Dymock poets\xa0and Frost\'s inspiration for "The Road Not Taken"),\xa0T. E. Hulme, and\xa0Ezra Pound. Although Pound would become the first American to write a favorable review of Frost\'s work, Frost later resented Pound\'s attempts to manipulate his American\xa0prosody.Frost met or befriended many contemporary poets in England, especially after his first two poetry volumes were published in London in 1913 (A Boy\'s Will) and 1914 (North of Boston).The\xa0Robert Frost Farm\xa0in\xa0Derry, New Hampshire, where he wrote many of his poems, including "Tree at My Window" and "Mending Wall."In 1915, during World War I, Frost returned to America, where\xa0Holt\'s\xa0American edition of\xa0A Boy\'s Will\xa0had recently been published, and bought a farm in\xa0Franconia, New Hampshire, where he launched a career of writing, teaching, and lecturing. This family homestead served as the Frosts\' summer home until 1938. It is maintained today as\xa0The Frost Place, a museum and poetry conference site. He was made an honorary member of\xa0Phi Beta Kappa\xa0at Harvard in 1916. During the years 1917–20, 1923–25, and, on a more informal basis, 1926–1938, Frost taught English at\xa0Amherst College\xa0in Massachusetts, notably encouraging his students to account for the myriad sounds and intonations of the spoken English language in their writing. He called his colloquial approach to language "the sound of sense."In 1924, he won the first of four\xa0Pulitzer Prizes\xa0for the book\xa0New Hampshire: A Poem with Notes and Grace Notes.\xa0He would win additional Pulitzers for\xa0Collected Poems\xa0in 1931,A Further Range\xa0in 1937,and\xa0A Witness Tree\xa0in 1943.For forty-two years\xa0– from 1921 to 1962\xa0– Frost spent almost every summer and fall teaching at the\xa0Bread Loaf School of English\xa0of\xa0Middlebury College, at its mountain campus at\xa0Ripton, Vermont. He is credited as a major influence upon the development of the school and its writing programs. The college now owns and maintains his former Ripton farmstead, a\xa0National Historic Landmark, near the Bread Loaf campus.\xa0In 1921, Frost accepted a fellowship teaching post at the\xa0University of Michigan,\xa0Ann Arbor, where he resided until 1927 when he returned to teach at Amherst. While teaching at the University of Michigan, he was awarded a lifetime appointment at the University as a Fellow in Letters.\xa0The Robert Frost Ann Arbor home was purchased by\xa0The Henry Ford\xa0Museum in Dearborn, Michigan and relocated to the museum\'s Greenfield Village site for public tours. Throughout the 1920s, Frost also lived in his\xa0colonial era\xa0home in\xa0Shaftsbury, Vermont. The home opened as the Robert Frost Stone House Museum\xa0in 2002 and was given to\xa0Bennington College\xa0in 2017.In 1934, Frost began to spend winter months in Florida.\xa0In March 1935, he gave a talk at the\xa0University of Miami.\xa0In 1940, he bought a 5-acre (2.0\xa0ha) plot in South Miami, Florida, naming it\xa0Pencil Pines; he spent his winters there for the rest of his life.\xa0In her memoir about Frost\'s time in Florida,\xa0Helen Muir\xa0writes, "Frost had called his five acres\xa0Pencil Pines\xa0because he said he had never made a penny from anything that did not involve the use of a pencil."[20]\xa0His properties also included a\xa0house\xa0on Brewster Street in\xa0Cambridge, Massachusetts.Harvard\'s 1965 alumni directory indicates Frost received an\xa0honorary degree\xa0there. Although he never graduated from college, Frost received over 40 honorary degrees, including ones from\xa0Princeton,\xa0Oxford\xa0and\xa0Cambridge\xa0universities, and was the only person to receive two honorary degrees from\xa0Dartmouth College. During his lifetime, the Robert Frost Middle School in\xa0Fairfax, Virginia, the Robert L. Frost School in\xa0Lawrence, Massachusetts, and the main library of\xa0Amherst College\xa0were named after him."I had a lover\'s quarrel with the world." The epitaph engraved on his tomb is an excerpt from his poem "The Lesson for Today."In 1960, Frost was awarded a United States\xa0Congressional Gold Medal,\xa0"In recognition of his poetry, which has enriched the culture of the United States and the philosophy of the world,"which was finally bestowed by President Kennedy in March 1962.\xa0Also in 1962, he was awarded the\xa0Edward MacDowell Medal\xa0for outstanding contribution to the arts by the\xa0MacDowell Colony.Frost was 86 when he read at the\xa0inauguration of John F. Kennedy\xa0on January 20, 1961. Frost originally attempted to read his poem "Dedication", which was written for the occasion, but was unable to read it due to the brightness of the sunlight, so he recited his poem "The Gift Outright" from memory instead.In the summer of 1962, Frost accompanied Interior Secretary\xa0Stewart Udall\xa0on a visit to the Soviet Union in hopes of meeting\xa0Nikita Khrushchev\xa0to lobby for peaceful relations between the two Cold War powers.Frost died in Boston on January 29, 1963 of complications from prostate surgery. He was buried at the Old Bennington Cemetery in Bennington, Vermont. His\xa0epitaph\xa0quotes the last line from his poem, "The Lesson for Today" (1942): "I had a lover\'s quarrel with the world."One of the original collections of Frost materials, to which he himself contributed, is found in the Special Collections department of the\xa0Jones Library\xa0in\xa0Amherst, Massachusetts. The collection consists of approximately twelve thousand items, including original manuscript poems and letters, correspondence and photographs, as well as audio and visual recordings.\xa0The Archives and Special Collections at Amherst College holds a small collection of his papers. The University of Michigan Library holds the\xa0Robert Frost Family Collection\xa0of manuscripts, photographs, printed items, and artwork. The most significant collection of Frost\'s working manuscripts is held by Dartmouth.Personal lifeThe Frost family grave in Bennington Old CemeteryRobert Frost\'s personal life was plagued by grief and loss. In 1885 when he was 11, his father died of\xa0tuberculosis, leaving the family with just eight dollars. Frost\'s mother died of\xa0cancer\xa0in 1900. In 1920, he had to commit his younger sister Jeanie to a mental hospital, where she died nine years later. Mental illness apparently ran in Frost\'s family, as both he and his mother suffered from\xa0depression, and his daughter Irma was committed to a mental hospital in 1947. Frost\'s wife, Elinor, also experienced bouts of depression.Elinor and Robert Frost had six children: son Elliot (1896–1900, died of\xa0cholera); daughter Lesley Frost Ballantine (1899–1983); son Carol (1902–1940, committed suicide); daughter Irma (1903–1967); daughter Marjorie (1905–1934, died as a result of\xa0puerperal fever\xa0after childbirth); and daughter Elinor Bettina (died just one day after her birth in 1907). Only Lesley and Irma outlived their father. Frost\'s wife, who had heart problems throughout her life, developed\xa0breast cancer\xa0in 1937, and died of\xa0heart failure\xa0in 1938. | |